


Wind on the Seacoast

by iamamiwhoami



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, F/F, F/M, Farewells, Heart-to-Heart, Heavy Angst, Meant To Be, OUAT - Freeform, Once Upon A Time, Once upon a time season 7, Regina Mills - Freeform, Reminiscing, Swan Queen - Freeform, emma swan - Freeform, swanqueen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24633304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamamiwhoami/pseuds/iamamiwhoami
Summary: On that occasion filled with smiles and applause, no one could ever imagine the sadness their eyes shared in tacit secrecy. The painful admission that, even after defeating all the fates that worlds and villains and authors and circumstances tried to inflict, thus proving that their fates belong only to them, some ironic sort of fate continues to find a way to keep them apart.
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Wind on the Seacoast

**Author's Note:**

> Greetings, reader. I tried to bring a genuine version of the ending to this show and I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> It was deliberately inspired in a song by a famous brazilian band called "Legião Urbana", the song "Vento no Litoral" (translating "Wind on the Seacost").
> 
> English is not my native language and I ask you to be patient.
> 
> Wish you a good reading. :)

The long studded lunar quartz brocade dress sparkled across the hillside of tall stones and underbrush, the wind waving long dark hair without a silver crown, the resplendent figure moving on a cautious slope, looking for the one who, one way or the other, sooner or later, was always on the run, always escaping, always slipping between the fingers, abstract as a memory.

Regina felt it immediately, as a sign of a world beyond. The marble hall filled with torches, barrels of wine and dancing bodies suddenly seemed cold. Her haughty magic suddenly seemed restless. An absence that resonated in her almost as costly as the endless hours before the coronation, wondering if she would appear. For when Emma Swan burst through the doors in her red leather jacket, her heart appeased without commands. When Emma casually thundered her petulant smile, her girlish manners, her golden curls, too rebellious for such a formal ceremony, but so dazzling on her, shining on her shoulders like strands of sun, Regina suddenly stopped the storm inside her.

When Emma was around, she could always genuinely feel that she belonged somewhere.

So the Queen slipped through the courtyard and the apple trees, the stone fountains and green mazes, leaving behind all smiles and greetings, all obeisances and ovations, venturing into the dark on gravel trails with the salty freshness of the sea invading her lungs and the sand sinking cold under her feet.

She didn't need potions or portals this time to reach her, there was no ancient evil magic trying to steal her light, not even spiteful rogue villains trying to defeat them.

And yet, even if briefly, Regina felt her more unreachable than ever.

The moment Emma turned to her, leather jacket over her shoulders and the hem of her pink satin dress soaked by the sea, the two pairs of eyes meeting in the vastness of the night, Regina deduced that the Savior always knew she would descend from the throne to the deserted coast only to find her, because in the end, through everything and despite everything, only the two of them had the knowledge that there was much more than that joy shared in the hall of revelry and drunkenness. There were the scars, the anguishes, the inexplicable attachments to the lives that once plagued them, as difficult to abandon as they are; the impossibilities, the inescapable crossings, everything that they yearned for and was refused to them, everything that they obtained and was taken away from them, everything that is most beautiful and good that, even today, they secretly hide to fear losing.

Emma crossed her arms when she saw her, the jacket stretching over her back like an armor.

"I see that you have not yet gotten used to the crowds." Regina broke the silence, the cordial smile spreading across her face as if it had been trained.

The smile offered in return was more genuine, more carefree, the blonde's shoulders hunched before relaxing. "You tell me." Then she laughed, proudly. “It's your coronation, Your Majesty. I think my mother can appear at any second with the cavalry. Even that these big parties full of people don't suit you."

There was an ease in the way Emma articulated her simple words that always delighted her, perhaps to the same extent that her sharp eloquence delighted her back in full secrecy of both delights.

Regina approached her, letting the splashes of the sea touch the noble dress, ignoring the occasion and those waiting for her again, allowing herself to see her only, with her golden hair dancing like flames of light in the darkness of the space around.

"I was born to become a queen, Emma." She argued in innocent provocation. "The craft requires considering the crowds."

"It doesn't mean you like it." Emma laughed again, the truth spoken in a casual tone. “I think a slightly chic and modern room with a fireplace and an old book has a lot more to do with you. Even more now, when finally everyone sees who you really are. "

 _"The Good Queen."_ Regina rolled her eyes. "Snow wouldn't miss the opportunity."

This time Emma laughed, and the sound filled the night with triumphant joy. “Come on, give her some credit. I rarely saw her as happy as when she crowned you up there. ”

Regina suddenly frowned. "And what about you?" She asked suddenly, before she could stop herself. "Are you happy, Emma?"

For a moment she thought that the question would never be trivial or appropriate for any of them, there could be no easy answer, it could not come clean and sweet from the throat. It would always be there as if it scratched inside. But then Emma tilted her head, hooking a long golden strand of hair behind her ear to clarify her own look of confusion and amusement.

"Of course I am, Madame Mayor."

But she crossed her arms again – armor – stubbornly unable to accept that in front of her was the only person capable of penetrating all the armor, bringing all the fortresses into rubble.

"I thought at this point we wouldn't be lying to each other anymore, Sheriff Swan."

Regina didn't try to make the statement sound so demanding and severe, she tried to be provocative, she wanted it to be provocative and fun as only they knew how to be with each other, but the most frank words slid in a serious and almost saddened tone – _You can lie to your parents, you can lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to me._ – causing Emma to retreat her eyes, fixing hers on the night sky to escape those of the Queen.

Regina's heart sank only for an instant.

“Hope...” Emma sighed, her green irises shining under the moon and stars above. "I chose this name because of you."

The confession blossomed out of Regina's eyes, her mouth parting slightly, lost between amazement and candor. "Emma..."

“Yeah.” Emma shrugged and smiled, her eyes never returning to the Queen's. “I wanted a name that meant something good. Something important.”

Regina felt – and immediately ignored – the lump in her throat. “You are a good thing, Emma. You're still the Savior. The daughter of hope personified.”

But Emma refused with a blunt nod. “I was born a Savior, wasn't it? Henry rescued me to be who I was born to be. You didn't have to be anything Regina, you should never have been anything that you didn't choose to be. And after all, you chose goodness. You embraced what you called a second chance. You may have thought that that Regina I saw in the dream catcher was gone with the stable boy, but she always lived and will always live within you.”

The words, again simple, with a more sincere and sweet kindness than they used to share, echoed in every corner of her soul still so damaged, and Regina found herself unable to verbalize everything she would like back to her. "I never would have done it without you and Henry." She pointed out humbly.

"You would." Emma smiled proudly, nodding to the sky. "One way or another you would have kicked them all in the ass with the elegance of a true queen."

Regina could only see half of that smile, but the delight seemed inevitable.

"You fought everything, too, and won, Emma." She bowed, taking her turn to admire the night sky beside her, the small waves breaking at their feet. “You found your family again and again and faced all the dangers even when you couldn't believe them. I witnessed you opening up to love and kindness in all its forms. We are remote hopes, you and I, in different ways. And here we are at last, Miss Swan.”

She felt the green eyes burning in her with new depth, if that was possible, and this time it was she who didn't dare to look at her, only picking up the solemn nod of her head and her grave face. "Here we are at last, Madame Mills." Emma mirrored, resigned.

The cease of voices suddenly snapped at them, and when their eyes met again, it devoured them mercilessly, anguish burned in the retinas, contained, repressed, euphoric and grappling fiercely with the memories they shared.

_You're Henry's birth mother...?_

_Hi..._

Abstract as a memory, Regina had thought. But all the most valuable things she ever had about Emma were the memories, never really forgetting her, never failing to absolve and haunt her in the same proportion. It twisted in their minds and stomachs, a sharp spiral crossing them in the encounter of these looks, because the eyes never lie, the eyes deliver the inevitable truth that no one wants to claim or utter, even if it is not vile, even if it is precious and magnanimous, because it required so much of all their essence that it made it hard to keep eye to eye for a long time.

"When you kept the portal and brought my mother and me back from the Enchanted Forest, I thought..." Emma whispered, eyes now locked in the Queen's. "I thought something would happen. Not the way it should be, maybe not the right way, but still... Something. You know?"

Not so surprisingly, Regina smiled, speaking for herself. "And then, without delay, my mom was ravaging the city. But maybe I can understand, Emma. When we contained the diamond together and saved Storybrooke, there was no more than a few seconds between the triumph and Henry's disappearance for me to think about it, but it was there. When you said that maybe we were strong enough together, it was there. I felt it, even as I felt the fear of disappearing forever and not being able to redeem myself with Henry."

Emma offered her own sly smile in return. "I remember Neverland. It was...”

"Terrifying." Regina interrupted with a harsh sigh. "You were so unwise to jump off that ship that my only secret impulse was to throw you back into the sea when David brought you on board again."

"You wanted me drowning after I have almost drowned?"

"I was worried." Regina objected to snatch involuntarily, never annoyed by her mischievous smile.

"I know." Emma laughed. "Now I know. I was worried all the time, too. Not just Henry. When Tinkerbell left that cave without you, I thought I would lose you both on the same day."

"We also made magic together that night." Regina remembered it tenderly.

"That was much cooler than the diamond, right?"

"Hiding the moon while trying to rescue our son from a little maniac... Maybe I can agree that there was some fun, considering it was a successful mission."

She thought Emma would laugh adorably again, but her smile faded abruptly, the thin line of her lips stretching in gravity, her fists clenched in her jacket.

_Armor._

"When he woke up and hugged us, it felt right." Emma whispered weakly. "I didn't understand at the time how I would have liked to. It was right, Regina. Everything was in its right place."

"Even if you understood at the time, Peter Pan deceived us." The Queen tried to ease the torment in her eyes. "In the end, we were being separated again."

Has Emma always been so tormented in the eyes?

"Wow." Emma shook her head, stunned. "I had already forgotten what it was like to have forgotten you. All of them, all of Storybrooke. But not remembering you was... I knew that a very large part of me was missing. But I didn't know how much space you occupied in that part until I took that potion."

"I didn't expect to discover the burden of your absence in the Enchanted Forest as well. At first, I conditioned the whole misery to Henry's absence, but it wasn't true. I wasn't ready to admit that I missed you."

"I don't think I could have admitted it either, not when I was too busy being selfish, thinking of taking Henry back to New York..." She admitted, embarrassed by the past.

"It was an interesting experience." Regina smiled wistfully. "I was happy somehow, because I don't know how I would have dealt with his distance if you didn't recognize me either. But it hurt me to think that you could want him away from me again. As if you weren't just depriving myself of him, but also incurring to me complete loneliness again to miss you both. ”

"I'm still sorry about that."

"I know, Emma. I know." Regina's smile was completely renewed, absolute forgiveness of everything. "Henry remembered. He believed in you and in the magic. Isn't that what matters?"

"And you broke the curse. When you said you loved him and that you would never let him go... I felt it, Regina. I knew it."

The Queen contemplated her in the silence for a moment and knew that the direction of all the words had finally changed. Because they always had this habit of starting a conversation in tones of sarcasm and provocations, losing control of their fears disguised as trivialities, until they gave in to the treatment of complete sincerity, moved by all their truths. No one could ever touch it like them. No one could ever understand it like them.

She woke up when the cold of the night gusts stopped, surprising with Emma resting the red leather jacket on her shoulders over brocade and moon quartz, the Savior's closed-eyed smile hiding her embarrassment and tremendous tenderness.

"Your indiscreet and abrupt entry into the palace reminded me of your invasion on my vault, when you brought Marian from the past."

"Are we digging up all my faults, Majesty?" Emma teased, still slightly embarrassed.

Regina adjusted the jacket on her shoulders, accepting the heat and trying not to question whether she would feel cold, because to return to certain memories was also to remember that Emma had always been the height of stubbornness. Not so different from her.

"It is a valuable memory, after all." Regina laughed graciously. "You always had a very peculiar way of rumbling through my doors."

Emma smiled in renewed confidence. "That night I said that we were unique, maybe even special." A brief second of suspended silence and she sighed deeply. "We still are."

It was just as dangerous to be enchanted by Emma's words as it was to control her own.

“I felt it, Emma. At that very moment in my vault. But I was so mad at you, so bitter for Robin and Marian. Perhaps more because they both had a second chance after he lost her to death so many years ago. It reminded me that I could never save Daniel.”

"I felt it too, when I looked for you at the city hall." Emma lit up, finding it funny what could have happened. "I thought about breaking down the door before saying I would fight for your happiness, but I thought you would probably turn me into a horrible duck if I tried."

"See, aren't you smarter than you look, my dear?" Regina teased, her splendid smile denouncing the delight of a private diversion.

Suddenly, in the midst of the current words, it became irrepressible. From the past to the present, in an endless and unbreakable line, from which all memories brought revelations of the obvious and the inevitable, surrounded by coastal solitude under the starry night.

_"When you tried to save me and we drove towards the entrance to the city, fleeing the beast..."_

_"I was determined not to lose you that day."_

_“Your brilliant idea saved both of us. I remember what I felt when you got out of the car...”_

_"You saved me from myself when we were after Lily... I never thanked you for that. I guess I didn't know what to say, thinking that you were the only person who could pacify me like that. ”_

_“If it's any consolation, I used to think that you would always do the opposite for me. Always causing chaotic disturbances, triggering all my commands. It took me a long time to understand that you would always challenge me to find my own peace, as in the book of Isaac, for example. Your speech about love was so beautiful, Emma. I was not myself, but I felt it at that moment. It was you again, always by my side, encouraging me to choose happiness. Always the same... Except when you committed that madness and sacrificed yourself for me and was robbed by the darkness. I even insulted you when the magic vortex was gone...”_

_“I said that you worked too hard to have your happiness destroyed. How could I not save you? ”_

_"Was that your only reason?"_

_"..."_

_"..."_

_"Not. It wasn't. ”_

_"Before you disappeared, you told Killian you loved him."_

_"I know. I c... I couldn't sacrifice myself for you and then say... "_

_"Emma."_

_"I couldn't."_

_"I thought I would lose you forever."_

_“But you found a way, didn't you? You figured out how to go to the Enchanted Forest. You know I thought, for a moment, that we could have shared a dance on Camelot. But again I was with Killian and you were with Robin and nothing has ever seemed so complicated. When you asked me to save him, the pain in your eyes... ”_

_"Why did you kiss Killian soon after? I never understood it perfectly.”_

_“I had to get anything else out of my head. The darkness was tempting and that thing in the form of Rumplestiltskin was teasing me with secrets from my own mind.”_

_"You... Are you going to tell me?"_

_"He said .. He suggested that I let Robin die. Because then you would be alone and I could get rid of Killian because no one but myself would probably miss him. I saved Robin and he made fun of me. I had to touch Killian to remind myself of how things were and that they couldn't change.”_

_“I'm sorry, Emma. I wish you had shared with me all your afflictions at that time.”_

_“You were all already doing a lot for me. And I knew that if I let you in even more, it would make things worse. But I still felt, Regina, all over Camelot. When you confronted me with the dagger, when we talked in the royal woods, when we free Merlin. I thought it would consume me completely.”_

_“When we got back to Storybrooke and you came at my door, I never wanted so much to stop you from leaving me. Henry was broken in his room and Robin was trying to cheer him up, but it demanded everything of me not to send him back to the forest and drag you up, because even when we were in the collapse of your darkness, without our memories of Camelot, nothing it never felt as right as our family. Me, you and Henry.”_

_"You knew I was there. You believed the Emma you knew wasn't gone. I think you were the only one who believed.”_

_“You said Rumplestiltskin tried to convince you to let Robin die. I think I had similar reasons for so readily agreeing to go to the underworld to save Killian.”_

_"What do you mean?"_

_“I was with Robin and you had lost Killian, and I knew that seeing you alone again would mean that I would take a reckless step sooner or later. I thought I had to stay with Robin. The fairy dust... I had to bring Killian back to you.”_

_“When I couldn't share my heart with him... I thought it would work with you, if you ever needed it. I also thought it would be scary to see my heart in someone's hands with my own eyes, but with you... I have never felt so safe, Regina. But we were there to save my supposed true love, even when you said I was too good for him. Should I have dared to think otherwise?”_

_"After the underworld and Hades, even in mourning for Robin, I thought you and I would eventually be fine with our losses and find each other somehow."_

_“I felt it on the road when we went out to get Henry back. When we got back, I could sometimes feel it when I looked at the Evil Queen in Storybrooke. I thought I was losing my mind. But it was there. ”_

_"I was mortified by the fear that the Queen could tell you everything."_

_"When you found me and saved me in the wish realm... Seeing you in that strange place was just... I didn't want anyone else."_

_"I shouldn't have felt it when you announced that Killian asked for your hand, but I did."_

_“In that bar, if we didn't have to take care of my drunk mother, I thought... I think I would lose control. It wouldn't be right with any of us. But it looked so strong over there... ”_

_"When we fought the dragon to return to Henry..."_

_"When I fought Gideon and you told me about hope..."_

_"When you fell, oh, Emma... I thought... If it weren't for Henry..."_

_"I was looking for you at my wedding... I wish I had been brave enough."_

_"You have always been brave enough, Emma."_

The return of silence burned in their throats as if there were still countless unspoken words. They faced each other before the immensity and suddenly felt exhausted and overwhelmed, it was too much and still not enough at the same time. However, open and deep revelations were not the reason for all the anguish. It was the impassiveness of everything, no matter how many words echoed off the deserted coast, no matter what all the stars and the endless ocean witnessed as they poured out all the truths from their hearts, because nothing was about to change for Regina Mills and Emma Swan.

“Brave enough...” The Savior's shoulders fell in conceded defeat, the exhaled breath sounding fragile and painful. “Don't you understand? No matter what I do, the right choices, the wrong choices. I keep losing you. One way or another, we always end up separated. Even when I find you, even when I do everything to find you, I lose you, as if our time will never come.”

“Emma...” Regina tried to reach her only to see her turning her back for her, shaking hands grabbing the air in excruciating agony.

“When we last saw each other in the forest, on the portal, when we said our last goodbyes, everything should be fine. I was pregnant and I was going with Killian to a different world. It had to be there, I had to give up there. But I was wrong again, miles and miles and out of time away from you, reminding me every day that it we were meant to be, somewhere in everything we lived, it should have been you and me."

"It's still you and me, Emma." The Queen's voice trembled high and brittle, but projected loudly as a plea. "Not the way I've been wishing for so long, not as we intended to be, but it still are and will always be you and me."

Emma sighed again in immense anguish, turning again to her, her flowing hair and green eyes in utter helplessness. She returned quickly, disturbed, surprising the Queen with her arms around her. Her muscles were shaking, but she looked right and sure, unable to let go. Nor could Regina leave her now, a breath of air escaping her throat, a warmth spreading over her skin, as if the waves were rising up her trembling legs and boiling in her belly, bubbling up all the old longings kept.

But there was still composure in her and an instinctive need to be prudent when Emma was being hasty. She held the Savior's cold cheeks, touched her cold lips with her thumb and her cold jaw in a soothing caress. And Emma eased the uproar, her thin nose slowly sliding over Regina's, one arm rising gently to hold her diamond-covered neck. The lips finally met with the same slowness as the touch agreed, touching weakly, too tenderly and still contained.

Emma pulled away from her, gritting her teeth in distress, and her lashes fluttered before she squeezed her eyelids tight as if in pain. But Regina couldn't check on her, numb as green eyes briefly opened for her, drawing her into another kiss, completely antagonistic to the first. The Queen felt herself weakening, arching against the Savior, who held her with more certainty than ever.

The sea seemed to roar in their ears.

Perhaps in rapture. Perhaps in censure.

Lost in wonder, Regina leaned over to part her lips, no longer cold, the breakthrough making her exude a breathless, melodious sound next to Emma's drunken gasp, warm and sweet on her quivering chin.

Regina waited for it. She hoped that her life, despite all the twists and turns since early childhood, would find itself shattering on Emma Swan's lips. She experienced the ghostly sensation in the corner of her imagination countless times, but there, in the darkness of the coast, the windstorm around them like an icy cloak for feverish bodies, proved the opposite. There was no shattering, but a solid, colossal and whole unification; her fingers tangled in Emma's golden hair, Emma's arm around her waist and the soft, warm palm on her neck showing a delicacy she didn't even know Emma possessed, while her inner and outer strength made her agonize in pleasure.

Returning together from the dive, trembling lips and uneven breaths, their eyes met again and Regina wished she was surprised by the torment still notorious in Emma's, but she knew it would be there, radiant in concealed despair. With the back of her hand, now away from her body and arms, she allowed herself to caress Emma's flushed face, laughing without wickedness.

Emma frowned, dismayed, and the Queen felt an urge to clarify her gesture. "It's curious." She said carefully. “You're a married woman and I'm perfectly aware of that, but look at us right now. We may never be able to become entirely flawless, don't you think?”

She thought that the blame for their acts would fall on Emma in epiphany, but the Savior smiled so sweetly, as if nothing else tormented her, gracefully wrapping her fingers around the Queen's wrist, bringing her effortlessly close to her again, her forehead leaning against hers and both pairs of eyes giving way to comfortable darkness again. "No." She whispered in response. “I don't think we can. But I'm good with imperfection.”

It seemed that the night would go away in day and they would still remain there, in the secret caress, in the shared tenderness, it seemed that the Sun would appear on the horizon of the ocean and they would find a way to deceive all destinations, to defeat all consequences, to transform all paths on a single route whose only destination would be to find each other. But Emma sighed, pulling away first, kissing her forehead to persuade her to open her eyes and face the truth with her.

When she finally did, Regina saw tears in Emma's eyes, almost bursting and overflowing at the ends of her eyelids, trembling lips opening for the final question that haunted them, that always haunted them.

"When will it be our time, Regina?"

It was so painful to smile that Regina could not say how she managed it, an exhausted and watery smile, knowing she was unable to dare lie to her. Perhaps, if they were like Snow White and Charming, she would find the right words, full of hopeful promises.

But they were Regina Mills and Emma Swan, and for some intangible and treacherous reason, it seemed that their journeys would go on forever equidistant.

"I don't know, Emma." She admitted without further ado.

Emma just smiled, genuine and sweet under the eternal torment of her eyes. From afar, at the top of the hillside and under the lights of the castle, the calls came as distant whispers and they knew immediately and again that another farewell demanded its fulfillment. They both looked up, the almost imperceptible voices of Killian and Henry echoing far away like the sounds that steal the dreamers from the sleep.

Then, after the desire, the joy, the fear and the anguish, the Savior straightened up solemnly with her feet in the sand, bending in a deep perfect reverence, taking the Queen's hand for a chaste kiss.

"Greatness awaits you." She held tightly to the jacket sleeves still on Regina's shoulders, a silent guidance that she shouldn't return it, and smiled her most charming smile. "Goodbye, my Queen."

"Goodbye... Emma."

Regina saw her moving unreachable towards the hillside, her own tears finally accumulating in a thick dam balanced on her eyelids, the night devouring the slowly walking figure of Emma Swan, gold strands and pink satin dress fluttering in the strong wind coastal, the vision that she had been forced to face many times, always a farewell, always at the limit of all times.

Through an endless darkness governed by the grave symphony of the unstoppable majestic waves and the impetuous wind, the newly crowned Queen of the Enchanted Forest sank her face in red leather and hid, selfish and wounded, her raging tears only for herself. And the stars suspended above, reflected on the aquatic immensity, seemed to mourn for her, sparkling bright as tears falling in the ocean, and she found herself finally surrounded by an infinite world around her greatest pain. With the jacket tight over her chest and her face in glistening damp trails, she closed her eyes to lose herself in all those memories again, the imaginary compass unhinged in her thoughts with the pointer ceaselessly spinning, wondering when it would finally point her into Emma's path and, if it never happens, how many more times she will bear to say goodbye to her without breaking irremediably forever.

**Author's Note:**

> I must be frank to admit that my hopes for this pair lasted until the last episode, because all my heart conceived is that, sooner or later, it would be their time. Have you ever heard something like "I had to go through everything to finally reach you and stay with you"? I believed that, heartly.
> 
> I hope we will meet again soon.
> 
> Find me on twitter: @dokkstormur. :)


End file.
